Incoherent
by ncfan
Summary: -Shunsui x Nanao- It's always so much fun when he gets too drunk to form words.


**Characters**: Nanao, Shunsui**  
Summary**: It's always so much _fun_ when he gets too drunk to form words.**  
Pairings**: Shunsui x Nanao**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Vague spoilers for Turn Back the Pendulum arc**  
Timeline**: Post-Turn Back the Pendulum arc**  
Author's Note**: Forgive me for taking a depressing view of Shunsui x Nanao, with Lisa thrown in. Not all is happiness with these people; the potential for angst with "the threesome" is enormous.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

It's getting darker outside by the moment—the bite in the air only underlining the bruise-purple stain across the sky and the dull orange gold line at the horizon, leaving barely enough light for Nanao to see. She would shiver at the encroaching cold, but the limp body of flesh she has draped around her slight shoulders has the dual effect of both making it nearly impossible for her to walk and to keep her warm.

Shunsui murmurs something, and she finds she can't even make out the words, they're so slurred. Nanao bites her lip, not feeling the cold weather as much as the coldness of her own disgust.

_He's gotten drunk again. _That's nothing new. _He's gotten _really_ drunk again._ Sadly, that's nothing new, either.

Nanao stares long up at the sky, tracing stars with her bespectacled eyes as the starlight shines off of her thick glasses, and shifts Shunsui's weight on her shoulders as she drags him back in the direction of the Eighth division headquarters, his feet dragging the ground. Her shoulders are starting to scream and ache under his weight.

The people who volunteered to help her get him back tonight have bailed and if Nanao ever lays eyes on either of them again—which is likely to happen considering they're both her subordinates—she is fully resolved to make their lives _Hell_.

Shunsui slurs something again, again utterly incoherent, and Nanao feels her resolve to be cool and mature start to splinter like pressured wood as she rolls her eyes briefly.

It will be a long time yet before she gets him back to the Eighth division headquarters—and she's strongly considering just dropping him off with Unohana-taicho and heading back to her quarters alone—and by the time they get back, Nanao doesn't doubt that there will be no skin left on Shunsui's feet.

.

She's dimmed the lights of the captain's office and laid Shunsui down on the couch. Nanao's not comfortable bringing him to his quarters, or to hers, so Shunsui won't be getting a bed to sleep on tonight. At any rate, he doesn't seem to notice the difference, and is sleeping soundly now, not snoring or breathing hard. In fact, the only sign of being alive at all Shunsui shows is the slight rise and fall of his broad chest. His breath whistles slightly through his nose.

The light is now the deepest red it can be before growing black, and Nanao moves, silent and swift, to light the tiffany desk lamp in the corner so there will be a little light.

At this, a gentle gold glow ignites and melds in with the ruddy after-light from outside. The room is bathed in dim light.

Nanao sighs deeply, running a hand across the sill before latching the window shut.

There's dust thick on the tips of her fingers. She's not surprised.

This…it…disgusts her.

She can't say she's not used to Shunsui's drunken behavior. Nanao knows he used to drink purely for pleasure, and if he still did just drink to please himself, then there would be no revulsion coursing through her veins, no aversion or abhorrence.

He truly disgusts her when he behaves like this.

Because Nanao knows why Shunsui really drinks, when he drinks to distraction and amnesia.

She sinks with weariness into Shunsui's chair, preparing herself to sleep out the night there. The chair is far too big for her and she feels like she's being swallowed whole, but it's well-cushioned and soft and enveloping, and Nanao, so very tired, can almost give herself over to sleep.

Almost.

Her eyes are heavy, but stay open under the weight of her own thoughts.

Those eyes are inevitably drawn to Shunsui as his breathing fills her ears again, drowning out all other sounds (the sound of the air conditioning duct switching off in the background, the sound of officer's feet sounding overhead on the second floor of the officer's barracks), and, seeing him in such an abjectly degraded state, she can feel only revulsion, and weariness, and disappointment, and sadness.

She knows why he drinks.

And she hates that he tries so hard to forget, forget everything, forget what, more than anything, needs to be remembered in order to be healed from. Nanao can't help but hate him, just a little bit, when she sees how hard he tries to forget Lisa.

Because she doesn't have that luxury. Because she _can't _forget, because someone has to be awake and sober to remember the dead, and because she shouldn't have to remember alone.

_Because you should be able to see that I need someone to help me. Because I shouldn't have to ask you to help me, and because I shouldn't have to carry the knowledge that you wouldn't help me if I asked._

_Because you should know instinctively that this is the only time I will ever truly need you._

Shunsui is painfully unreliable. Nanao always knew that but it hurts to have it thrown in her face now. Because he shouldn't be stumbling around, incoherent, when he should be remembering.

Incoherence is Shunsui's luxury, Shunsui's sin, Shunsui's only medicine. Nanao will never have it.

She doesn't know why she comes out to the bars anymore. She doesn't know why she cares so much, that she has to drag Shunsui away from his sake and make sure he doesn't end up robbed and gutted in some seedy alleyway. Doesn't know why she tries to keep him from going to dim, sordid taverns in the first place, when she knows it's the only thing that make him functional anymore.

Nanao just knows that she does care, does care enough to keep Shunsui with her. She knows that she loves him. Maybe not sexually, maybe not romantically, not the way he loves—or claims to love her, but she does love him even when she hates him for having the audacity to think he can forget, even if only for a minute.

But, she thinks, staring with narrowed, bitter, pensive eyes at the floor, what she hates most of all is that he tries to forget Lisa by looking into her face. Shunsui thinks he can drown Lisa's reflection in Nanao's skin. Nanao knows…

Nanao knows it doesn't work like that.

If only she could get Shunsui to see it, see reality swimming around them like she does.

If only she could get him to see that if he drowns in incoherence, she will be utterly alone, and that she'll drown too.


End file.
